Push

29. She Saw Him Crumble

She Saw Him Crumble

Gwen

The pale lemon walls of my study were a sunshine prison. I was never leaving my desk.

Ping .

Another email.

I sank into the leather chair, the old, worn wheels not groaning quite as loud as me, and I rubbed the pinch in my temple.

Was I questioning my sanity for agreeing to work for a man who’d proudly declared himself an unforgiving perfectionist? The same man who’d once been the little boy who’d blinked at me, utterly perplexed, when I’d cried after skinning my knees on the concrete.

Maybe.

A little.

But relief filled my lungs with enough air almost to float.

Sure, my brother flirted with a line somewhere between being sweetly unhinged and a complete sociopath, but seeing his name in the flood of emails drowning my inbox made me feel strangely whole.

He was part of my life again. That was enough to keep me going.

My phone rang.

Gee, who could that be?

Grimacing, I tipped forward in the chair and accepted the call without bothering to check who was calling.

Before I could say hello, Elias blurted out, “ Please don’t quit.”

I laughed. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Oh. Yes. Good morning.” His laugh sounded more strained than mine. “I got held up in meetings and just logged on. I see our illustrious leader has been…” He paused as he carefully chose the right word. “ Busy .”

I scooted back in my chair, tucking my knees under and getting comfy. “Busy, huh?” That was an understatement. “Does my brother ever sleep?”

It was a valid question. It was officially only day two of working at Cumberland, but some facts were evident. I was convinced Liam didn’t have an off button. He sent snappy emails—“Note” this or “Action” that—at all hours of the night. He never stopped.

Elias dodged the question with a sigh. “ Please don’t quit.”

“Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “It’ll take more than a late-night email frenzy to scare me off. And based on some of the, uh, colorful emails I saw zipping around at midnight, I think Liam might be going easy on me. Like you said, his nagging comes from a place of caring, right?”

“That’s what I tell myself, anyway.” Elias laughed. “So, um…” He paused again. He didn’t seem quite used to talking on the phone, but was anyone these days? “How’d your little man settle into his first day?”

“Yeah.” A knot formed in my throat. “Great.”

Noah’s first drop-off at daycare had been easy.

I had no idea how Toby had pulled it off—brownie briberies, probably—but the center he’d found across town was incredible.

Nothing to see but smiles. The head carer had taken Noah and cooed and coddled him just the way he loved.

I could check the center app for updates and photos whenever I wanted.

I knew Noah was safe. So why had I cried the whole drive home after dropping him off? Is this how proper mums felt? Why did I still feel so shit?

I scrubbed away the fresh tears pricking my eyes and took a breath to lose any emotion from my voice. “Thanks for letting me work flexible hours,” I said. “Avoiding rush hour to drop Noah off was a huge stress reliever this morning.”

“Yeah, of course. Liam said you’d negotiated to work any hours you want from anywhere you want. He also mentioned that possible work locations included the moon.” Elias laughed. “Let me know if you need me to sign off on an expense report before you launch.”

I laughed with him. “Will do.”

“I better get back to it. I assume Liam will push your buttons all day, so I’ll arrange a fruit basket and an apology card now, okay?” I could imagine his crooked smile as he said those words. “Oh, and Gwen?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re working with us.”

“Me too.”

And I meant it.

Sitting in my study, my knees tucked up on my old leather chair, my thoughts spun from worrying about Noah to organizing the busy day ahead. My inbox was chaos. My brother, even worse. Yet, somehow, everything felt right.

Still smiling, I turned my attention back to my laptop. After I whipped through a few of Liam’s ridiculous “Action” emails, I reclined in my chair, my mug of almost-cold coffee in my hand and a file stuffed with paperwork open on my lap.

Dull . I flipped through the pages. Mindless . Nothing like the gory work I used to do. In a way, that was just what I needed. I missed the challenge of work, but life had changed. I had changed. As much as I wanted to be Gwen the Kick-Ass Prosecutor again, I just… wasn’t .

I raised my mug to my lips, about to take a sip, when the doorbell rang.

I groaned.

If that’s Liam…

My eyes rolled to the ceiling. Maybe he’d gotten over his fear of the doorbell…

I dropped my mug onto the coaster next to my laptop, grumbled all sorts of curse words as I pushed back my chair, and shuffled out of the study to the front door. If Liam dared to make one comment about my fluffy pink socks, I swear to…

My hand paused on the door handle. I leaned forward and pressed my eye to the peephole.

No one.

I frowned. Weird . I flipped the lock and yanked the door open.

Everything looked normal. The white picket gate was closed.

Toby’s car was in the driveway. The spray of the sprinklers fanned over the front lawn.

My brain glitched. I darted a quick look back to the driveway. Yep, that was Toby’s car.

Something soft curled around my fluffy sock.

My heart slamming against my ribs, I clapped my palm over my mouth, a scream stuck in my throat. My eyes flew down. A big hand with red, broken skin stretched over swelling knuckles wrapped around my ankle.

Toby was silent, hunched over, his head down, knees up, squashed into the corner of the veranda next to the door. He didn’t move. His hand stayed wrapped around my sock when I dropped to my knees beside him.

“Toby.” My eyes flitted over him in a panic. He was a mess. Blood—dark and red and almost dry—was streaked over the sleeve of his neatly pressed shirt. “What happened?” I reached for him, but my hand trembled when it landed on his hunched shoulder. “Come inside.”

“I don’t deserve to come inside.”

Other times he’d said something like that—usually with a bunch of flowers shoved in my face—I’d rolled my eyes or told him to get his head out of his ass. I didn’t this time.

Toby’s head sagged lower. “Remember how I promised I’d be careful? That I wouldn’t jeopardize our future?” A hollow laugh rattled his chest. “Guess what I did?”

My eyes drifted over his blood-stained shirt. “Not sure.” I tried to keep my tone light. I was channeling my inner Toby and downplaying the drama. This wasn’t the time for a lecture. “You took up ballroom dancing?”

Toby’s eyes lifted, red-rimmed and haunted, but a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “The competition’s fierce, doll.”

I wanted to smile back to reassure him, but I couldn’t. My heart was as broken and bruised as his hand, but there was a twinge under my ribs, right where it hurt the most. I wanted to be steel all over and pretend seeing him with that tortured look in his eyes didn’t matter. But it did.

I scooted into the gap beside him. The white weatherboard dug into my back, but I was where I needed to be.

“Did Ian push your buttons?” I asked him gently.

Toby’s chin dropped to his chest. “I need you to believe me, Gwen. I tried.” He sighed. “Ian said such ugly shit to me. I saw red. And then”—he jabbed his index finger at the ground—“he went down.”

“Fists of fury, huh?”

Toby threw me a helpless look. “Gwen, I tried .”

This time, I managed to smile. The pinch between his eyebrows eased a little. “I believe you.” I did. “You couldn’t dodge Ian forever.” He couldn’t.

The two of them working together was a ticking time bomb.

I never doubted Toby wanted to believe he could hold himself together and be the bigger person, but he had a twitchy trigger.

He liked solutions. He wasn’t the type of guy who sat around planning things out. He did stuff. Sometimes, stupid stuff.

“Need a lawyer?” I asked. “I’ll chuck in a freebie.”

Toby managed another smile, but he shook his head.

“Ian told Judy not to call the cops. He said that while he was spewing bullshit about his mission being to protect you, though, so who knows?” Frowning, he scrubbed his hand down his face.

“Ian knew what he was doing, Gwen. He wanted me to hit him. I just…” He puffed out a frustrated breath.

“I don’t understand why . What did I ever do to him? ”

Honestly? “I don’t know.”

“Well, if you’ve got no idea, what hope do I have of figuring him out? The only thing I’m certain about is his feelings for you.” He snorted a reluctant laugh. “Maybe he’s doing all this because I was the one who did enough push-ups to get the girl.”

“Your endless push-ups had nothing to do with why I agreed to go out with you.”

“You sure?”

I dignified that response by rolling my eyes.

“Oh?” he teased. “Should I demonstrate—”

“Toby Sullivan, don’t you dare .”

His smile was smug. “Yeah, ’cause we both know you’ll get those little pink patches right here.” He pressed his finger into my cheek even though I glared at him. “Just like you did back then.”

I narrowed my eyes. Goofball . “Clearly, you’re feeling better.”

Toby shook his head. “I screwed up so bad. I let you down. I let myself down.” He sighed. “You know me. Humor. It feels easier to make jokes because I don’t know how to fix what I did.”

My head tilted. Was he talking about punching Ian, or what happened with Kayleigh? Toby looked at me, eyes questioning but sadder than I’d ever seen. Yeah. Thought so. This was about Kayleigh.

“How do you deal with what I did?” he asked.

“I…don’t.” Usually, this was the point where I’d clamp my lips together and refuse to say another word.

We’d promised not to hide things from each other anymore, but I didn’t know if Toby was ready to hear how I felt.

“I’m angry. I’m lost. I put on a brave face for Marnie and work and the stupid girl at the café who always gets my coffee order wrong.

I’m not as strong as everyone thinks. I’m in a hundred pieces.

You were the person closest to me in the whole world, and you abandoned me—”

“Gwen, I never—”

“You did . You chose Kayleigh over and over again. I didn’t act like a saint, but I always chose you.”

Toby’s eyes rounded. Why? Oh. Tears. Hot streaks were running down my face. I roughly swiped them away.

Screw this.

I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing just how much he’d hurt me. I started scrambling to my feet. He was almost as quick and tugged me back before I could get my hand on the door.

“No,” he said softly. “Let me see, Gwen.”

I shook my head furiously from side to side.

“I need to understand.”

I lifted my chin. If he needed to see how much damage he’d done, so be it. What did being strong mean now, anyway?

“You want to see how much you hurt me?” My voice was shrill even though I desperately wanted to sound calm. “You want to see that you broke my heart? Look. You did this. You .” The world blurred behind the tears. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes. I need to understand what I did. I want it to rip me apart…right down the middle…and it does…but…” Toby seemed to cave in on himself.

He looked to the sky before his palm covered his face, but I could see what was happening.

The jokester was gone. His tears were raw.

Real. “But I don’t know how to fix us.” Emotion spilled out of him in rough gasps.

“I don’t know what to do to make this better. I just keep fucking everything up.”

It had always been the two of us. Toby and Gwen. We depended on each other. Somehow, that made the hollow in my chest ache more. I was the determined strength that soldiered us on. He was the laughter, our light at the end of the tunnel.

But, at that moment, we both plummeted into a dark pit without our lifelines. Neither of us had anyone else. I wished hatred could numb my heart, but I could never abandon him the way he’d abandoned me.

Burying my teeth in my lip, cautious, I reached for him. My hand slipped around his waist.

His eyes went wide. “G–Gwen?”

I ignored his shocked protest. I curled my other hand around his shoulder and burrowed my face against his chest, the thump of his heart frantic against my ear.

That hint of affection was like waving a bottle of water in front of a dying man crawling out of the desert.

Toby clung to me. His cheek nuzzled against my hair, and his arms crushed me until my lungs were flat. I could barely breathe. I wriggled.

“Please, Gwen. Let me hold you for a minute,” he pleaded in a whisper. “It feels like forever since you’ve been this close to me.”

It had been forever.

A bit of my heart splintered off. It was the bit that would always belong to Toby no matter what. He was more than my husband. For half my life, he’d been everything . I wished I’d shared that with him more before he’d made choices I wasn’t sure I could forgive.

And even if I could forgive him, would I ever forget?